


Two Made One

by Jikatabi



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Frottage, Guilt, M/M, Sex Pollen, Unconscious Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jikatabi/pseuds/Jikatabi
Summary: Zack hadn't felt quite right since escaping the lab with Cloud, but surely a bath to get the last of the mako off of both of them would help clear his head.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 6
Kudos: 93
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	Two Made One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lovejoy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovejoy/gifts).



Zack perked up when he heard the sound of water, and he quickly circled back around to pick up Cloud. "I think I found a stream," he told Cloud. There was no response from Cloud, not so much as a sound or a blink, but Zack hadn't been letting that deter him. "Getting you out of that mako-soaked uniform helped, but we could both use a bath."

It was just to get Cloud clean, he told himself, and to scrub off the tacky coating of mako that remained on his own skin, smelling sharp and acidic. He didn't let his thoughts linger too much on the strange hesitation that he had every time he put Cloud down, something that went beyond worries about him being okay while Zack left him, or on how hard it had been to tear his hands off of Cloud when changing him earlier.

Maybe it was another thing he could blame on Hojo. He'd gone years in the lab with barely any touch that didn't end in pain, or even seeing anyone friendly besides Cloud. Maybe his brain was trying to make up for it in an attempt to make things seem normal again.

When they reached it, the stream was wide and shallow, and its surface caught the moonlight in pretty sparkles where it cut through the trees that surrounded it. Zack set Cloud down, leaning him against a tree trunk, and stripped so he could rinse off first. The water was freezing when he stepped into it – right, mountain stream – but all the mako meant that Zack didn't feel it _too_ badly, even if it did make him really want a hot shower.

Compared to the few rinse-downs they'd had in the lab, at least, a bath in a cold stream was amazing. Zack waded out into the middle and found a depressed spot without too many sharp rocks where he could sit down and relax for a moment. The water here didn't flow too fast and only came partway up his chest, and Zack lost a few minutes to simply ducking his head in the water and scrubbing at his hair until he didn't think a trace of mako remained.

The water felt good, but it didn't make him feel any less weird. It was normal to be disoriented after coming out of the tubes – Zack knew that only too well – but he'd hoped that a few hours out in fresh air and wide-open spaces with no walls or glass in sight would get rid of that. If anything, it had only gotten worse.

Mako had preserved most of his strength, but he'd still felt oddly weak facing off against the infantrymen who had caught them sneaking out; his limbs didn't quite feel like they were his. His heart hadn't stopped racing even when they'd stopped to rest, and it still pounded hard in his chest to the point that it made him feel slightly dizzy. And sitting in this cold water, Zack felt hotter than ever.

He ducked his head under the water one last time and sighed as he stood up. They didn't have the luxury of time to wait around and see if his mako side-effects vanished and Cloud woke up. Time to get Cloud rinsed off and go find the bike whose keys were now in his possession.

Zack was getting worried about Cloud, anyway. Didn't matter that he could see him from the middle of the stream with no problem and that Cloud hadn't moved a bit. He needed to check on him and check his pulse and his eyes and take off that SOLDIER uniform to – to clean him off. Zack gave his head a slow shake, fighting off a wave of vertigo, and splashed back to the bank.

"This stream is pretty much liquid ice," he told Cloud as he knelt down next to him. "You'll probably think it's fine, though. 'Zack, this is what I bathed in for my entire life!' It's refreshing, at least. Gotta be awake so we can get away from here. And trust me, you'll feel so much better once you're clean and not covered in mako." Zack focused on chattering, trying to undress Cloud like it was something normal, even though his eyes kept lowering to his increasingly bare skin without his telling them to.

He gave his head another shake. He wasn't normally a pervert, and he wasn't going to be one now, no matter how long it had been or how cute Cloud was or how their skin seemed to fit together when Zack hefted him up and wow, that was a weird thought. Being in those tubes and subject to Hojo for so long must have made him start to go crazy. That had to be it.

Focus, he told himself as he helped Cloud into the water and eased him back down. Get Hojo out of his head, get Cloud clean, get them both dressed. Then they had to find the bike and start on their way to Midgar. Easy. They'd be on the road in no time.

Cloud didn't react to the cold water at all, though Zack flinched when he sat down next to him. "See, I knew you'd take it much better than me," he said. He felt too hot again, though the feeling did ease some as he picked up Cloud's arm and started scrubbing at the layer of mako stuck to it. The mako didn't need much convincing to come off, and soon Zack had cleaned both of his arms and his legs, and then he reached for his di—

He jerked his hand back, blinking back another odd wave of dizziness. What was into him today? There was no need to touch him there. Cloud wasn't that dirty, and the water would do enough to get the last scraps of mako off on its own. He set his hands on Cloud's back, instead, and then scrubbed at his chest – though he couldn't seem to help rubbing harder at his nipples than he needed to. They were hard, probably from the cold water, but the texture of his skin felt good under Zack's fingers, and he shouldn't have but Cloud wasn't pulling away, was still gazing forward at nothing and barely blinking.

Zack swallowed and told himself off again, then forced himself to move on. "C'mon, let's get your hair clean," he said, and his mind calmed into something resembling blankness as he carefully poured handful after handful of water through Cloud's hair. The color was darker wet, but the fluffiness of it was still there no matter how soaked it got. "Even water can't smooth down these chocobo feathers, huh?"

Cloud didn't laugh, or squawk in embarrassment. Zack closed his eyes against the sad disappointment that welled up at the lack of the familiar reaction – how sick _was_ Cloud? Surely the notes in the lab couldn't be right about him being unlikely to recover. Zack didn't believe that. Instead, he pulled his fingers through Cloud's hair a few more times until he felt better. His hair was nice to touch, too.

But Zack couldn't touch it forever. "Up we go now," he said, wrapping his arms around Cloud and tugging him up. At least Cloud could kind of walk like this, if Zack was patient and helped him when his drooping legs stumbled.

"We should let ourselves drip-dry first," Zack said as they reached the shore. "Seems pretty dry up here, so it shouldn't take too long, and we can rest some more. Gotta be in top condition to keep outrunning ShinRa!" He meant it as a kind of bad joke, but it didn't come out as one. Zack pretended that Cloud was rolling his eyes somewhere in his mind.

He hauled both of them onto a large rock that he'd leaned the Buster Sword against, just in case anything jumped out of the woods. It took a few adjustments to be sure that Cloud wasn't going to tumble off by accident if he slumped the wrong way, and then Zack heaved a sigh and told himself to enjoy the moment of quiet and everything he'd been unable to experience the past few years.

The rock glittered slightly and the texture was just this side of rough when Zack ran his fingers against it. The stream carried on its way in peace, making soft noises. The moon overhead wasn't really visible with all the trees, but the night was light enough that it had to be pretty full. Zack could feel Cloud's leg pressed against his.

His skin was warm, and with Zack's fever creeping back up his torso, that should have been unpleasant. Instead, it was comforting. Zack found himself shifting to press more and more of his leg against Cloud's, until they were practically touching along their whole sides. He just needed to get it out of his system, he told himself. This much wasn't weird. Seemed his heart was finally getting the message to chill out on the fight or flight, through it still thrummed too hard in his chest.

Zack's head felt blurrier the longer he tried to think about anything to fill the minutes. Exhaustion, maybe; even SOLDIERs could get tired, and who knew what effects their time in the lab would have. Zack was happy to blame anything on Hojo.

Eventually, he noticed that their skin was dry. Part of him wanted to lie down with Cloud somewhere and get some sleep out in the open in a world not coated with green – if his heart would stop echoing in his ears long enough for sleep – but he also didn't want to spend any more time near Nibelheim than they had to. "That's enough rest for now," he said, putting his arm around Cloud's shoulders and starting to swing himself up, but he found himself pausing halfway through the movement to stare down at Cloud.

His breathing was gentle, each breath in and out coming at long intervals, and combined with the way he was staring blankly ahead, Zack almost could have believed that he was simply lost in thought for a moment. Zack watched him blink, slowly – slowly enough that he could see the way Cloud's eyes glowed through his eyelashes and lit them. The blue was a pretty color, like the sky that would stretch above them tomorrow.

Zack blinked himself and found that he'd swung his leg over Cloud instead of off the rock. He tried shaking his head another time, but it only made his vision swim, and then his hands were on Cloud's shoulders for balance. "Let's get," he started to say, for himself more than for Cloud, but then he got distracted by the curve of the muscle underneath his fingers and how solid it felt.

"Going," he finished. The word felt distant; the idea of leaving felt distant, compared to the closeness of Cloud. Zack still felt warm, but not as hot now as his hands dropped and skimmed along Cloud's torso. This felt better, felt right.

Wait, no, he had to... do something. Cloud. Help Cloud. This wasn't helping Cloud, this was – being weird. Zack didn't know why he was doing it.

He should stand up, he thought. Tried to, even, but he didn't get very far before his vision narrowed down to Cloud and the strange dizziness came over him again, the urge to go back, to touch his forehead to Cloud's and join their bodies – not like that, Zack thought, but it was getting hard to think. He rubbed his cheek against Cloud's and tried to bat away the fog in his mind.

Cloud. He had to help Cloud, right, which meant – staying with him, joining together with him. That didn't quite sound right, though Zack followed the urge anyway, pressing Cloud to the rock. His eyes were so blue, so bright. Zack put their foreheads together again and stared into them, too close to be able to focus on them. He put a hand on Cloud's neck and felt for his pulse.

Beat, beat, beat – it was hard and steady and like Zack's, but not enough like Zack's. He kept one hand there as the other wandered, to his hair and to his ribs and to his chest, feeling Cloud's skin and rubbing his fingers against it as though that would make them closer. Zack was gratified when Cloud's heart started beating faster, if not as quickly as his was going, and his breathing picked up, too. He matched his to Cloud's.

What was he doing? What did he want? To become one with him, to – no, that wasn't right, that wasn't why he'd hauled Cloud out of the labs.

The labs. The experiments. Hojo. Did this have to do with what he'd done to them? Zack remembered him talking about _reunion_ when he'd been going on about S-cells or J-cells or whatever-cells; Hojo hadn't been the most understandable at the best of times and Zack felt even less inclined to think about him now. Not when he could rub circles around Cloud's nipples and press his lips to his neck and rub his hardening cock against his hip.

"It'll be good," he murmured against Cloud's hair, not sure it was meant for Cloud or himself. He reached down and touched Cloud's cock, gently, then wrapped his hand around it. There was no response on Cloud's face, but his breathing picked up again and his hips twitched – it wasn't much, but it was more of a reaction than he'd shown all day, or really in months.

That was a good sign. Zack knew he was still in there somewhere. Knew that if Cloud had been fully awake, he'd have wrapped his arms around Zack and clutched at him as closely as Zack wanted to hold him, touched him back, those pretty eyes focusing on him instead of gazing at the tree canopy. He couldn't do any of those things right now, but that was okay – Zack could touch enough for both of them. Maybe it would even help him break through whatever haze he was in.

And Cloud's body kept reacting, even if his face didn't change. Zack saw his lips part, just a hair, as his breath came faster. His cock stiffened in Zack's grip, and Zack gave it slow strokes, captivated by the soft texture of the skin, how hot it was to the touch, until it was fully hard in his hand.

Murmuring Cloud's name, he re-positioned them and shifted his hand so both of their cocks were rubbing together. Yes, this was better, was what he needed; it cooled him down from the hot flush he'd had for hours and took over his whole focus. Their hearts were beating together, he thought, their breathing matched, and they were as close as two people could be, moving against each other. Each time Zack rocked them together, bright sparks of pleasure seemed to flood his whole body.

Zack ground down harder against Cloud, wanting it to somehow be even _more_. Smushing his face into Cloud's hair wasn't enough. Gripping his hip wasn't enough. Zack hitched one of Cloud's legs up and tried to wrap it over his own hip; it didn't entirely work, as Cloud couldn't keep it there, but it was good enough to help a little. He shuddered on the next thrust, at once happy with how good it felt and desperate for even more of a connection.

He pulled back for a moment, searching for Cloud's eyes with their captivating mako glow. There might have been a flicker of something in them as Zack rubbed them together again, which made him grin and tighten his hand around them both. He wanted to tell Cloud how good he looked, how much Zack liked touching him like this, how close they'd always been and how close they would always be now, but the words were hard to put together. Zack had to settle for lying on him once more and trying to push their bodies even further against each other.

Still, the urge to dive deeper into Cloud didn't go away; it was so sharp that it ached in his chest, and he ground against him harder, hips rolling, trying to fulfill the urge.

"Cloud," he panted. "I, I – I—" He needed something more, wanted – wanted more than Cloud's hair tickling his face and Cloud's cock against his own and the hot pleasure that soaked into him as he moved against him, though he couldn't quite understand what that more was. Maybe something deeper or maybe simply for Cloud to be able to lift his arms and wrap his hand around Zack's and try to fit them together even better. Zack could almost feel it, thought for a moment that Cloud twitched under him again. It made him murmur garbled promises about help and reunions and a promised future into Cloud's hair. He didn't know what he was saying, but he knew that he meant it all.

More, there had to be _something_ that he was missing. Zack ran his spare hand through Cloud's hair and tilted his face up, bent his back so they could kiss. It was an odd kiss with Cloud unable to respond, but Zack kept at it because even that much was better, closer. He slipped his tongue into Cloud's parted mouth and rolled their hips together and they were touching so much, it was so good and Cloud was good and the way he felt against Zack's cock was good, and even still he felt desperate for something just beyond this.

He wanted, wanted, wanted; he drove himself against Cloud and held him as tightly as he could, and it wasn't enough to satisfy that need but it sure filled others, pushing Zack further and further along until his mind went blank as he surged over the edge.

The orgasm left him blissfully content for a few minutes, drifting in an empty haze of pleasure with no overriding urge to become one with Cloud, only a feeling that he'd done his best on that front. Zack eventually pushed himself up, blinking the last of it off.

He looked down at the mess between them – apparently Cloud had come, too, at some point in there – and what had just happened suddenly hit him like a sword to the head.

Where the _hell_ had all of that had come from? That hadn't felt like him. That hadn't – he wasn't that kind of person. That had been far beyond creepy and perverted. He shouldn't have done that. Why had he done that? What had been with all that junk about how they needed to become one and how he needed to touch Cloud? Thinking about it made his stomach turn.

Zack sat up and pushed his hands into his eyes, taking a couple of deep breaths. No, he wasn't that kind of person. He'd never done anything at all like that before, and he'd never felt any of that weird stuff before, either. It must have been some kind of effect from the lab. That was all. That had to be all. Now he knew about it. It wouldn't have to happen another time. He hadn't been able to help himself without knowing why he was doing any of that. Next time, he'd fight it off and he'd never, ever do that to Cloud again and everything would be okay.

He managed to rinse them off again without the urge to jump Cloud seeping back into him, and he got them dressed and on their way to the bike. "We're, uh," he said, before stopping to wince at how hoarse his voice sounded. After coughing a couple of times, he continued, "We're going to head for Midgar now. It'll probably take a while to get there like this. Might as well enjoy the scenery on our way there, I guess, right? You'll get to enjoy it more, since I'm driving."

The torrent of words covered his nerves as he helped Cloud along through the woods and then, when they finally reached the bike, into the bike's sidecar. "There you go," he said. "You're all set, right? Buckled in? Can't have you flying out after everything else we're already been through, huh?"

Cloud's gaze was empty. Zack patted his hair – once, only once – and climbed on the bike.

He rode through the dawn and through the whole day until dusk settled. Zack could have kept driving – the roads out here weren't that well-lit, but SOLDIER eyes could deal with that better than those of most folks – but he could feel the exhaustion starting to catch up to him. He needed sleep, so he found them a nice place to bed down off the road, with soft ground and not too many rocks.

Zack set Cloud down and made sure he looked comfortable, then very firmly set himself down a couple meters away. No more weird touching, he told himself, though the temptation was flaring up again. He could deal with it now that he knew where it was headed, he was sure of it.

But despite his tiredness, he couldn't sleep. The chilly night was too hot, and his heart beat too loudly in his ears, so hard that he could feel it in his whole chest. Zack tried to ignore it all and go to sleep, though when it was clear that it really wasn't going to work, he gave in and shifted closer.

Then closer. And a bit closer. And then he was reaching for Cloud to hold him – maybe it was kind of safer for him against any roving monsters, he tried to tell himself, but he knew that was a lie. He just wanted a way to rub a hand up and down Cloud's upper arm, and an excuse to check his pulse even though he didn't have any reason to. It thumped hard against Zack's finger on Cloud's neck.

A finger on his neck turned into a hand up the back of Cloud's shirt, splayed across his thin waist. Zack's cock throbbed under his uniform. No, he told himself. No more of this mako thing or reunion thing or whatever it was. It was a temporary side effect and it would go away, or else they'd figure out how to fix it like they would fix Cloud's mako poisoning. He wasn't going to do that to Cloud again, and he ignored the voice in the back of his head whispering that Cloud wasn't awake, couldn't stop him, wouldn't have to know.

Forbearance wasn't Zack's strongest point, but he managed to resist the urge to touch even more, to tangle the two of them together again, and at some point he somehow fell asleep.

In the morning, he dragged Cloud back into the sidecar, trying not to touch him more than necessary, and hopped on himself. There, he could do it. All he had to do was resist again tonight, and the next, and the next, every night until they arrived in Midgar. He looked at Cloud, and it was hard not to reach over and put his hands in Cloud's hair, then let down fall down his face, his neck, his—

"Come on, Spike," he said, forcing as much cheer into his voice as he could. "Another day of adventure."

Cloud was silent. Zack got the bike going and set them off down the long road.


End file.
